The Snooker Stance

The stance of a snooker player is quite important when wishing to improve your game. A good snooker stance will allow you to have a rigid base which is balanced enough to give the foundation for a solid cue action. The idea is, when your snooker stance is solid, balanced and alligned to the shot correctly, you can then strike the cueball with as little body movement as possible and push the cue through in the correct line and in a straight line. You will often see rookie players coming to the snooker table with a very poor posture, often with both feet close together and both legs bent slightly. This causes an unbalance which in turn causes the body to move slightly and he/she is therefore unable to push the cue through in a straight line. One of the most fundamental requirements to play the game well is to have the ability to hit the cue ball as straight as we possibly can. So lets start to analyse the stance in a bit more detail by having a look at the picture below. The most important part to the snooker stance is the position of the feet. Ideally a wide stance will give us more balance but not so wide that too much pressure is put on the upper legs. So approach the table in the same manner as i describe below in points.

Always approach a shot two steps behind the line of the shot before setting yourself up for the snooker stance.

Stand one step away from the shot looking down the line of the shot and with your shoulders at right angles to the direction of the cue ball and have your right foot dead in line with the cue ball.

Now walk into the shot at the position we need to be in order to take the shot. Your right leg must remain in line with the white ball at all times.

Now bring in our left leg and keep it about 20 inches away to the left and our left toes should be facing at a right angle away from the shot. Our right knee should be pointing directly at the centre of the cue ball.

Bend down keeping your right leg straight and your left slightly bent as seen in the photo. Push your buttocks out slightly and line up the shot with your cue appropriately.

Our balance is coming from both legs with this strong stance but slightly more on the side where we will be cueing.

Now that we have done these simple steps, we should be well balanced to minimize movement. To test this, get a friend to push you gently while in your stance position. If you have the stance correct, there will be little or no moment of your lower body. Once you have mastered this, you should see yourself cueing straighter, particularly if your stance was poor previously. Practice this as much as you can and eventually it will become second nature to you. I’ve included a little video to look at which demonstrates the fundamentals of a good stance.

The next part of our tutorial series looks at the Bridge Hand and demonstrates where and how to set up a good bridge. You can check it out here on out Bridge hand page